One person was killed and another suffered major injuries after an aircraft used by Virgin Galactic for space travel experimentation crashed Friday during a test flight, authorities confirmed.

SpaceShipTwo, carried by carrier aircraft WhiteKnightTwo, launched at 9:19 a.m. from a location in the Mojave Desert, according to officials from Virgin Galactic, which is owned by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson.

The aircraft was released by WhiteKnightTwo about an hour later and flew freely by rocket power for the first time since January. Friday’s flight was SpaceShipTwo’s 55th and WhiteKnightTwo’s 173rd, according to the company.

The crash of the vehicle, undergoing its first powered test flight since January over the Mojave Desert, 95 miles (150 km) north of Los Angeles, came days after another private space company, Orbital Sciences Corp, lost a rocket in an explosion moments after liftoff in Virginia.

The back-to-back accidents dealt a considerable blow to the fledgling commercial space launch industry, which has been taking on more work traditionally done by the U.S. government while expanding for-profit space markets, including tourism.

Television footage of the Virgin Galactic crash site showed wreckage of the spacecraft lying in two large pieces on the ground, and the company said the spacecraft was destroyed. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said a debris field was spread over more than a mile.